A refuge of sorts

In the 1970s, the old Southwell Workhouse building was used as a temporary refuge for women and children, until they could be found more permanent homes. One of the rooms, used then as a 'bed-sit', has been left much as it was found when the National Trust took over the building in 1997. It has been furnished in line with what past residents and staff have recollected of this period of its history. When I visited, there was an exhibition telling some of the very moving stories of women who lived here in those days - battling through tough personal times but helped along by the friendship and support they experienced here.

My visit to The Workhouse really gave me food for thought. I've also been watching the TV series 'The Mill', a dramatisation of life in a Cheshire cotton mill in Victorian times. (It had poor reviews by the critics but I've found it watchable and interesting. It's based on the historical archive of a real mill.) It shows how closely the lives of some of the mill workers were linked to the old workhouses. When extra labour was needed, the mill-owners sent to the nearest workhouse to 'buy' people out. If you received an injury or proved otherwise unfit for work, you were likely to be sent back to the workhouse. Reasonably enlightened employers like Sir Titus Salt were not in the majority, and it made me realise afresh the importance of his vision for Saltaire, in the context of the times.

Images of The Workhouse

The Workhouse, Southwell, is quite sparsely furnished. Little remains of the original furniture and The National Trust in the restoration has chosen to evoke an atmosphere rather than try to reproduce exactly how it would have looked. But you can get an impression... The windows, though overlooking fields and the vegetable garden, have locks and the Governor would have chosen whether they were open or closed. With little heating apart from a few small coal fires, the building would no doubt have been freezing cold much of the time. The curious curved walls in the yard are the only latrines, four in total, one for each 'class' of resident - able-bodied men, able-bodied women, infirm men and infirm women. They are merely holes in the ground, draining to the outside where the 'night-soil collectors' could take away the waste.

Beds in cramped dormitories had straw mattresses and thin blankets, and a 'guzunder'! (Imagine the stench of unwashed bodies, urine.... and the bed bugs too!) TB was rife. Southwell's workhouse, however, took most of its water supply from rainwater collected from the roof into a huge underground storage tank, and being in a country area this was relatively pure, so records suggest that they did not suffer cholera outbreaks like many city workhouses. 

The women did laundry, cleaning, hard scrubbing of the stone floors (rather poignantly, you can see dark shadows where the beds would have been and lighter areas that have been well-scrubbed for years) and cooking. Vegetables (potatoes) were prepared in the damp cellars, which often stood inches deep in water and were lit only by tallows. Men tended the garden, broke stones up for roads, picked old bones clean for fertiliser and unpicked tarry old rope (oakum). Some of the work was purposeful but much was not, simply there to occupy the inmates with hard work and to act as a deterrent. 

The table shows the prescribed and cheap diet - enough to keep people alive but not enough that it made the workhouse an attractive option. Breakfast and supper were bread and gruel, a kind of thin porridge. Lunch (dinner) was broth (thin soup) and bread on three days, boiled meat and potatoes on three days and suet pudding on Saturday. Any misbehaviour (fighting, refusing to work, running away in the workhouse clothes) was punished, by having bread or potatoes instead of the usual meal. Repeated or serious offending was punished by solitary confinement in a dark windowless cell. Punishments were decided by the Board of Guardians who ran the workhouse, rather than by the Governor.

It all sounds horrendous by modern standards - but bear in mind that this was at the same time that Sir Titus Salt was building Saltaire, in order to get his workforce out of the disgusting, insanitary, unhealthy conditions in the crowded cities. So a clean, well-kept building in the countryside, with regular meals, might actually not have been so bad after all.

Stealing their souls

At Southwell's Workhouse, costumed volunteers demonstrate how life there was lived in the 19th century. The two ladies pictured looked - and smelled - a lot cleaner than I suspect the real inhabitants would have done! Nevertheless they kept 'in role'. When I asked permission to take the photo, they feigned amazement at my fancy gadget and worried that it would 'steal their souls'. I assured them it would only take their likeness. Made me think that being in the workhouse in the first place may well have been what stole their souls. But, as the guides were at pains to point out, for many people entering the workhouse was - literally - a life-saver. For the first time in their lives perhaps, women (segregated from the men) might have felt safe from abuse. Children were given an education, something that at that time they would not have received outside. Being able to read and write would have enabled them to make a much better life for themselves as adults, a means ultimately of escaping the workhouse.

Nevertheless, workhouses carried a terrible stigma. Many of the buildings went on to be used as hospitals or residential homes for older people. The maternity hospital I was born in had been the old workhouse. It later became a community hospital. My mother (and many others) hated the place; it still cast a dark shadow. Even after the building was pulled down and a new hospital built, she still dreaded ending her days in there. (Thankfully, she didn't.)

The Workhouse

I am enjoying revisiting old haunts and discovering new ones in my original 'home' area in Nottinghamshire. My late mother's apartment is up for sale but until we sell it (and it looks as though it may take a while) I am making the most of a very comfortable holiday home!

I had never been to the building shown above before... it's a Workhouse. (Nor, as far as I know, were any of my ancestors forced to sample its delights - though anyone who watched Una Stubbs on 'Who Do You Think You Are' on TV recently will have seen her exploring just such a connection.) This magnificent building, just outside Southwell, is now in the care of The National Trust, and it has a fascinating history.